New plant species named after Matt Damon’s character in The Martian

In The Martian, astronaut Mark Watney uses his own ingenuity, Martian soil, and poop to grow potatoes to keep himself alive until a rescue mission could be planned. To commemorate the character’s impressive botanical skills, some real life botanists have named a new species of plant after him. The newly discovered flower is officially known as Solanum watney.

So why name a new plant after this particular movie and literary character? According to lead author of the paper Chris Martine, botanists aren’t usually the hero of the story. Scientist heroes aren’t very common in the first place, but even when the hero is a scientist they tend to be in physics or engineering — something with a little more pizzazz (sorry botanists). Well, plants can be interesting too, as demonstrated by The Martian.

The new plant species is native to northern Australia and is a type of bush tomato. Don’t let the name fool you — Solanum watney won’t be growing anything you’d recognize as a tomato. Bush tomatoes are small, wrinkled, brownish fruits that while edible, are not commonly consumed. Some species (not this one, though) are poisonous from high levels of the glycoalkaloid solanine. These plants do regularly produce more prominent flowers than regular tomato plants.

Interestingly, the potatoes grown on Mars by Mark Watney are more properly known as Solanum tuberosum. That’s the same genus as the newly-discovered bush tomato species that now bears his name. Solanum watney even grows in reddish, dusty soil in its natural habitat, not unlike the potatoes Watney grows on Mars.